"Chalker, Jack L - Quintara 1 - The Demons at Rainbow Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

The team, and she along with them, had been crying most of the time about not making the big haul, having rotten luck time after time, but they'd been wrong. They'd been lucky indeed up to now, and now the due bill was at thedoor. One by one, or all at once, their luck would desert them, they would all wind up just like Hama, just like the vast majority of teams always did. They weren't different, and they had just about used up their dispensations.
The tentacles were just getting stirred up again, with neither she nor Tris having sufficient energy to shoot them anymore, when suddenly there was a vast, explosive sound above them, followed by a horrible whine, and then, all around them, the darkness fell away and a great shaft of sunlight filled the whole forest region. The light, touching the water and the tentacles, seemed to act like acid on the creatures, who dissolved and writhed and sped away from it.
And then the Widowmaker's aging, banged-up shuttlecraft descended, going this way and that to avoid the bigger trees, until it hovered very near them.
*'I've got them! They're alive, but just barely, from the looks of it," the Durquist's odd, grumbling, nonhuman voice came to them. The creature, looking somewhat star-shaped in its special suit, emerged from the hatch, jumped to the trees and clung as if born there, then slowly made its way to the two figures. Tris had enough strength left to help the Durquist get Modra in, then allowed himself to be helped inside.
"My apologies for taking so long, although I calculated how much energy reserves you might have had," the creature told them. "We figured that the only place you could be was around Kama's body, since it gave out a signal that'll drive instruments crazy for parsecs, but I couldn't come down and get you until after sunrise. The only way I could deal with those tentacles was to burn them with the sun; otherwise I might just as well have sent you falling into them."
The ride back to the capital was very strange, a mixture of relief and sadness. Tris alone seemed in a relatively good mood, feeling that he'd cheated death yet another time and that this alone was a victory worth drinking to. Modra had been uncharacteristically silent, keeping mostly to herself, and rejecting alcohol or feelgood pills.
"No report until we get paid -- cash," Tris told Trannon Kose, the Ybrum who ran the ship and was the theoretical safety backup for the team on the ground. "I don't want them paying off, reading the report, then stopping payment and going bankrupt before we have ours in our account."
"What we'll get will cover expenses and repairs and some dock fees," the spindly, trumpet-nosed Ybrum pilot responded, "but with this kind of report we'll get no more. They'll pay in specie, or they'll learn nothing -- I've been stiffed enough by this time to know how the game is played. A few intimations that we get ours now or the report gets left in somebody else's hopper does wonders. But unless we get another job, it won't be enough to do more than maintain us."
"How long?"
"A month. Two tops. Depends on what I can sneak out of their offices with."
Tris Lankur sighed. "Okay, we've been down this far before. With that much time I can find something to keep us going."
Modra stared at him grimly. "Another one like this? A First Team job? I don't think I can take another like this."
"Well, unless you have a magic wand for finding us another pot of gold like the one you brought when you signed on," Lankur responded, "we'll have to. Hey -- you know the rules. The only reason the possible payoffs so good and the only reason it's a way out for races like ours is because it's damned dangerous. This one was worse than most, I agree, but we made it!"
"All but Hama," she retorted softly.
He sighed again. "Yeah, well, sooner or later everybody dies. When you grow up knee-deep in bodies, some of them your relatives', you celebrate the victories. %u don't spend much time mourning your losses, or life wouldn't be worth living at all."
She smiled at him. "Five years ago talk like that sent a shiver of excitement through me. Now -- I -- I just don't know anymore. I do know I need a break. Some time off. Some time to get myself and my head together again."
"I got to admit, when you first joined up none of us thought you would cut it," Tris told her. "You know that. But now you're tough, Modra. Tough, experienced, and gutsy. It's in your blood now, and once it's there, it never lets go."
"Maybe. Maybe you're right. I don't know. I don't know anything anymore," she told him truthfully. He still slept soundly; she hadn't had a single period of more than fitful, nightmare-filled sleep. "I think I want to find out, though. When I get back, I'm going to cable my folks and have them advance me a ticket home. Just for a little while. Just to see if I go nuts back there, stir-crazy from boredom or whatever. Maybe to clear my head and find out just what I do want, I do know I need the trip, though. Even if you're right, I'm not going to be any good without it."
He shrugged. "Yeah, okay, if that's what you want -- technically, you're still the boss. What if something comes up while you're gone, though?"
"Let me know. If I come back, then we'll both know."
"Fair enough. For me, the last thing I ever want to do is go home,"
She had gone home, even though something inside her pulled at her to stay. At the time it seemed the only thing to do.
But, God! If she could roll back time now and stay back with the ship. . . .

PURGATORY IS FOR LOSERS

Modra Stryke seemed radiant when she returned to the capital, and she looked fabulous as well. She was made-up, dressed in a fancy outfit that certainly wasn't cheap, and she'd had her flaming red hair redone by somebody who really knew what they were doing. Dressed, made-up, even bedecked with jewelry, she looked so fine that had she not been well-known around the grungier end of the spaceport, she most certainly would have been mugged.
Each of the small, independent teams had an office there; nothing more than a cubicle in a run-down warehouse, but it was an address nonetheless. She waltzed in jauntily, getting compliments from the humans who could recognize her and stares of disbelief from the other races who knew her but didn't understand human vanity at all.
The central "receptionist," was a Quamahl with six arms terminating in pincerlike yet soft claws and another at the end of a long, trunklike snout. It was a creature who could not appreciate human appearance at all, and acted as if there was nothing different about her. In point of fact, the Quamahl probably couldn't see any difference, considering its own standards were so different and also considering that it had never met a human it didn't find repulsive-looking.
"I see you are back," grumbled the Quamahl.
She smiled and nodded, used to the creature. "Anybody up there?"
"Just Lankur right now, probably sound asleep. The Durquist is working on the ship and Trannon Kose is in the city at the Exchange on some kind of business errand"
She nodded. "Tris will do just fine. "She walked to the square lift that was the only way so many different shapes could be accommodated and said, "Four." The lift immediately hummed, and rose with her to the fourth-level catwalk.
She walked past various small offices she knew well, noting that most were dark, then got to hers, opened it and walked in.
Tris Lankur was not asleep; in fact, he was on the phone arguing with somebody, but when he looked up and saw her he said, "Look, something's come up. I'll get back to you/' He hung up, then settled back and took all of her in. Lankur was one of the few in the complex who could appreciate her, and he gave a soft whistle.
"My, oh, my! A few weeks home does wonders/' he commented.
She smiled. "I came right over. Besides, I wanted to keep looking like a woman for a little while longer."
"You certainly do that," he agreed, "although you don't look too bad without all that and in a skintight team suit, either. At least nobody would ever mistake you for me/* He paused a moment, sensing there was something more on her mind that she was reluctant to broach. "You work out your problems?"
"I -- I think so," she responded, her expression suddenly serious, thinking about how to say what she had to say. Finally she sighed and said, "Oh, the hell with it. Tris, I got married."
He was so surprised that he stiffened, and his brow furled, and he grew suddenly a bit cold. Then he chuckled. "Married? Baby, nobody gets married anymore. Not around here, anyway, and not in our kind of business."
"Yeah, well, I used to think that, too, Tris, and maybe for most people it's still true, but -- well, it was like me taking over this company. An impulse, a gamble, but one that felt right for me."
He stared at her. "You're serious!"
She nodded.
That chill stiffness was suddenly back. "Who to? Nobody I know, I feel certain. Couldn't be anybody you knew, either, unless it was some old sweetheart from the home fires."
She sighed, cleared the junk off a stool, and sat down. "Look, this is kind of hard to explain. I'm not even sure I can explain it. It just -- happened -- that's all. After that last job I was just a wreck. Call me a coward or just call it the one that put me over, but that was the case. I had nightmares, I was paranoid, I kept expecting tentacles to rise from anything liquid, even my soup. I needed company, somebody to lean on right then, and I met this guy who was very nice and very understanding and very interesting. I kept it up with him because we both came from villages in the same county back home, and, at first, it was just because he was nice, and then it was also because I discovered he had money, and finally because I enjoyed his company. I think I was somebody exotic to him, too; a First Team owner who was from the same place he was but who had been through the kind of experiences he'd only dreamed about. I think maybe that was part of it -- I lost my feel for the romance of this job, but he still had it."
"So you have a nice time, you have a few laughs, maybe even a roll in the hay, and you have a new friend and contact," Lankur responded. "You didn't have to marry this guy!"
"I know, I -- look, this is hard for me, okay? It just seemed so right, somehow, and the longer it went on, the more right it seemed, at least for me. He was, just, well, very kind and very gentle and treated me like I hadn't been treated since before I left home, only with respect, too. Hell, /had to seduce him, he was so nice. When I was with him I didn't have the bad dreams, didn't feel so insecure, got some of my empty spots filled up again. And I gave him something, too; like his overlooking all my faults and thinking of me as if I were his romantic fantasy. I'm an empath, remember. I could feel it, and feel his genuineness."
She could feel now, too, and it disturbed her. Around and in Tris Lankur there seemed to be a cold, utterly dark emptiness, a mixture of barely controlled rage mixed with tremendous -- sorrow. It wasn't what she expected at all. Surprise, yes, but his emotional reaction was more akin to a husband who thought he had the perfect marriage learning that his wife had run off with another man.
"Damn it, Tris! Stop it! We weren't married! We were -- are-partners!"
He stared at her with a cold hurt inside him that was physically painful for her to bear. "You could'a married me if you had to be married. Somehow I just never saw you as the type. Hell, we spent five years together and never even screwed for fun."